SF supes taking on junk mail

There are a lot of good reasons to ban junk mail (litter, greenhouse gas emissions, overflowing landfills). But for Derrick Lomax, a Bayview homeowner who has worked for the U.S. Postal Service for 28 years, there’s an even better reason not to: his job.

“I see massive layoffs, homes lost,” if junk mail is banned, Lomax said after a hearing for a non-binding San Francisco measure that would urge the state legislature to create a registry akin to the national Do Not Call program. “We value choice and openness in San Francisco …I don’t want to be the greenest person in the unemployment line.”

Lomax was one of a number of postal workers and representatives from the direct mail and printing industries that came out Monday to speak against the resolution, authored by Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi. They cited the worsening economy and the fact that people can already opt out of mailing lists, a process criticized by Mirkarimi as onerous and ineffective.

Environmental advocates, on the other hand, railed against junk mail as “offensive” and “wasteful.” The committee agreed, voting to forward the measure to the full board.